Page:Pan's Garden.djvu/543

 unlawful adventure in her blood; but nothing more. The vast obsessing Entity that had constituted her judge and executioner was now entirely gone. He was spared the added shame of knowing that she realised what she did.

Sometimes she left his side, to come back presently with a little rush of pleasurable alarm. He was uncertain whether he liked best her going from him or her sudden return. Their tread was now muffled by the needles as they went slowly down the pathways of the Piney Valley. The occasional snapping of small twigs alone betrayed their movements. Heavy branches, soaked like sponges, splashed showers on the ground when their shoulders brushed them in passing, and drops fell of their own weight with mysterious little thuds like footsteps everywhere about them in the woods.

Mánya dived away from his side. She came back sometimes in front of him and sometimes behind. He never quite knew where she was. His mind, indeed, neglected her, for his thoughts were concentrated within himself. Her movements were the movements of a block of shadow, shifting here and there like shadows of trees and clouds in faint moonlight.

'Uncle, tell me one thing,' he heard with a start, as she suddenly stood in front of him across the narrow pathway, and so close that he nearly bumped against her. 'Isn't there something here that's angry with you? Something you've done wrong to?'

'Hush, child! Don't say such things!' He felt the shiver run through him. He pushed her forward with his hands.

'But they're being said⁠—all round us. Uncle, don't you hear them?' she insisted.